Kaspersky reveals insights on cybercrimes in the Middle East, detects a 35% increase in cyber attacks, and shares defence mechanisms.
Kaspersky shared some insights and forecasts related to the cyber threats in the Middle East regions for the third quarter of 2023, followed by the best practices as a defence mechanism against these cyber vulnerabilities.
According to Kaspersky, malicious objects were detected on 25% of ICS machines globally and 27% of Industrial Control Systems (ICS computers) attacks in the Middle East. Phishing attacks on corporate users detected in the Middle East in Q3 2023 increased by 35% compared to Q2 2023.
Kaspersky also detected over 2 million attacks on IoT devices in the Middle East in Q3 2023. All these attacks were spotted on Kaspersky IoT honeypots, a set of decoy devices for attracting the attention of cybercriminals and analysing their activities.
“In forecasting the development of the cyberthreat landscape for 2024, we anticipate a dynamic evolution of cyber threats marked by an upsurge in state-sponsored cyber-attacks, and ‘hacktivism’ will become one of the norms of cyber-warfare,” said Dr Amin Hasbini, Head of Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis team for the Middle East, Turkiye, Africa region.
“Exploitation of vulnerabilities in mobile and IoT devices will increase. The prevalence of accessible generative AI is set to fuel an expansion of spear-phishing tactics and AI-assisted malware development, including through malicious AI bots, such as FraudGPT, WormGPT, and WolfGPT: they can create realistic phishing emails targeting employees to convince them to pay fraudulent invoices or help criminals develop malware much quicker for example.”
“Businesses today should be proactive and counter these cyber threats with advanced technologies such as threat feeds, security information and event management systems, endpoint detection and response solutions, and tools with digital forensics and incident response features,” concludes Dr Hasbini.
